The longer that someone suffers from untreated chronic pain, the more that pain affects both physical and emotional health.
Optimal Assessment and Treatment
Our staff of health professionals will assess your pain history, previous investigations and treatments, current medications and functional state enabling our physicians to understand your pain and its impact on your life. This assessment helps in developing a customized treatment plan.
Your plan may include medication adjustments, nerve blocks, trigger point injections, an exercise program and a Chronic pain Self- Management Program.
Goals of Pain Management
We understand that chronic pain is a complex medical problem that can have a significant effect on your physical, emotional and spiritual well- being.
The main goals of successful pain management are reduced pain but, more importantly, a return to better function and quality of life.
Your Pain is Real
All of us experience occasional aches and pains in our lives. Acute pain is an essential reaction of the nervous system that helps alert you to possible injury. This pain will usually become less severe as the injury heals. However, chronic pain is different from acute pain. Chronic pain develops due to changes in the tissues, nervous system and brain. This makes the pain more intense and longer lasting. In these cases, simply treating the underlying injury may not resolve the chronic pain entirely.
1 in 5 Canadians over the age of 18 report chronic pain daily or occurring most days of the week.
What to Expect
Our staff is committed to ensuring that you receive the best care possible. We require a formal referral from your family doctor and have a standard referral form available on our website. When all of the relevant information is received, we try to see patients as quickly as possible.
It is important that we learn as much as possible about your pain concern, previous treatments other health issues and your functional limitations in order to recommend the best patient centered treatment plan for you. Therefore, all new patients complete a comprehensive information package before seeing a doctor for consultation.
Our Approach
Injection-based Therapies
We offer injection – based therapies which, include nerve blocks, trigger point injections, therapeutic Botox, and epidurals. With chronic pain, the “bombardment” of the pain can sensitize the brain to pain signals. This process of “central sensitization” is what we are attempting to treat with injection treatments.
Infusion Therapy
We also offer Lidocaine infusions at our NeuPath Centre For Pain and Spine, Oshawa location. This infusion helps to treat many conditions including Fibromyalgia, Chronic regional pain syndrome, neuropathic pain, chronic diabetic neuropathy and vascular headaches. This treatment is covered by OHIP with the exception of medications which can be covered under a patient’s private insurance.
Sub-acute Program
This program addresses and treats patients with a minimum of 4 weeks and up to 6 months of persistent pain. The sub–acute program focuses on patients with head, neck, back pain and those who encounter pain as a result of workplace injury (WSIB) or motor vehicle accident (MVA). This is an OHIP funded service.
Nerve Blocks
Nerves are like wires, carrying messages about touch, heat, pain and other sensations to the brain. By injecting a substance, such as a local anesthetic (freezing) or a cortisone like drug (Steroid), into or around the nerve, the nerve is temporarily “numbed” and stops sending messages to the brain. The length of the time that signals are blocked depends on the individual patient, the type of nerves blocked, and the amount and type of local anesthetic used. Nerve blocks can either be used for short term pain relief or as a treatment for various types of chronic pain.
Chronic Pain Self-Management Program (Paused Due to COVID)
Making changes to the way you think about pain can change the way you feel about pain and eventually improve your function and health.
The 12-hour Chronic Pain Self-Management Program is an educational, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) small group program that helps patients better understand the chronic pain process and teaches non-medicated coping strategies.
Research has demonstrated that the more you know about your brain’s response to pain, the less fear you will have, and less impact pain will have on your quality of life.